The Commune

Amazing journalism. I can’t believe I had never heard of Centrepoint before. Very thorough and thought-provoking… I have always thought that the idea of communal living sounds amazing, and it’s so crazy and sad how people always manage to screw it up royally and end up with deeply traumatized victims. May they find peace in their lives and may we learn from our mistakes.

Gives a sense of New Zealand fifty years ago along with a gripping dark story of yet another narcissistic cult leader leading the well-intentioned down the garden path. As an American with a lot of NZ communal living in my past, it’s also like a travelogue. It would be more fun if it wasn’t so disturbing. (Warning: abuse is detailed throughout). Hard going but excellent. This story needs to be told.

Barri, especially, exemplifies the struggle of being a good person in a bad situation. Watching her progression to see the harm around her, trying to take action from within, and then from without, rings so true. So many see good in a thing and want to fix it, but ultimately, when a pervasive harm runs so deep, sometimes you have to destroy the thing to save those being harmed. This is a story that doesn’t paint the cult with a single brush. It doesn’t paint the members as crazy or evil. It shows the complexity of how people can make equally horrible and terrible decisions while simultaneously making truly caring and loving decisions. The people interviewed are allowed to reminisce with fondness about the good while still feeling regret and pain about the bad. Really well told. I highly recommend listening if you have even a passing interest in cults, or even in the overarching growth (or lack thereof) of a group of people who find themselves in a position they never should have been in.

The story was well told by a charming team. Being a podcast, the words, music and audio effects are what convey the story and those components are especially good here. The editing, the way the host would describe what someone was saying then we cut to the person speaking, that was very effective. Other podcasts sound like they are cobbled together from audio recorded in cars and those can be fine... But this podcast sounded very professional and was skillfully put together. Other podcasts have too much overlap, reusing audio from previous episodes. In this podcast that is done appropriately, not to pad the thing out but to remind us of these earlier statements, which may now have clearer meaning. I especially liked the engaging and weird music and way the recordings of the cult leader would pop up and sound warped. Appropriate for the weird and warped world this took place in.

I really wanted to love this podcast. Fascinating cult, engaging reporter, immersive audio… But to have ads literally every few minutes felt jarring and sleazy and I couldn’t even get through the first episode. Bummer.